


Beautiful Disaster

by LadyGrey



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Based on a True Story, M/M, PTSD, Songfic, Tumblr: letswritesherlock, beautiful disaster, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGrey/pseuds/LadyGrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stark series of interconnected vignettes about what it's like to be in a relationship with someone who has PTSD. It's dedicated to anyone who has been through this. When John's PTSD is mentioned in fic, it's usually about his nightmares, or a flashback during a case, but PTSD effects so much more than that in a relationship, so very much more. </p><p>Based on the song <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUnI1qLZPNg">Beautiful Disaster</a> by Kelly Clarkson. </p><p> </p><p>  <em>I'm longing for love and the logical, but he's only happy hysterical. . .</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Disaster

“Get Down! Get Down! Get Do. . .” John's shouts are lost in a horrible gurgling sound followed by coughing that goes on for far, far too long before John wakes with a sob. 

Sherlock stands at the sitting room window with his violin in one hand and his bow in the other, not playing. He is, in fact, crying, silently, as he has been every night since the swimming pool. John dreams, and shouts, and coughs, and Sherlock feels. It feels like a shot of ipecac followed by a swift kick to the chest. Sherlock doesn't feel the bullet tear through his shoulder, or the blood welling up in his throat, and he doesn't feel his face hit the sand or hear his mates calling his name as he lies dying, but he feels John's despair like it's his own. Empathy. Dear god, it is horrible.

John stumbles down the stairs, half asleep, and into the kitchen for a glass of water. He gulps it down and puts the glass in the sink. A chair scrapes on the floor; John sits down at the table, sighs, and puts his head in his hands. After a moment, he shifts.

“Not sleeping tonight, then?”

“No,” says Sherlock, voice deeper than he intended. He lifts his bow and begins to play so he won't have to look at or talk to John.

* * * * * * * * * *

He'd been a prideful idiot the day they moved in together. Curing John's limp was just a distraction during the slow moments of the case. It wasn't until they fell against the wall in the foyer of 221B, laughing, that Sherlock realized he'd made a mistake. John looked at him, speared him with a smile, all his previous despair overwritten by momentary joy. This man was a disaster, one step away from mad. He wouldn't know rational thought if it punched him in the face, and if it did, he'd probably laugh at it. Sherlock might have been addicted to cocaine, but John was addicted to emotional amplitude, forever riding sine waves of joy and despair. 

Sherlock could fix him, but at what cost?

* * * * * * * * * *

“I'm not a problem for you to solve, Sherlock! You can't _fix_ me!” John punched the wall and left a dent and a bloody smear on the wallpaper, not the first. 

“Breaking your hand certainly won't help,” Sherlock pointed out.

“This isn't about my bloody hand! This is about you meddling in my life. _I am not an experiment_ , do you even get that? I am a person. A _person_ , Sherlock.”

“You are a person with a terrible therapist and nobody to talk to. Why not me?” Sherlock kept his voice calm and even, so as not to upset John any further.

“I don't have to talk to you. You already know everything,” John glared at Sherlock and kicked the coffee table. “You're the most brilliant stalker in the world, because somehow you've convinced _me_ to follow _you_ around.”

“You are angry at me right now for nicking your therapist's notes. But I did it because I care about your feelings.” 

“Oh yes, the great Sherlock Holmes suddenly cares about feelings when his only friend is angry at him for violating his privacy, then he cares!” John clenched his hands into fists and looked like he wanted to punch the wall again.

“You aren't really angry at me, John, you just need to be angry, and I'm convenient.”

“I need to. . .what? No, fuck you. Fuck. You. You do not get to tell me how I feel, you emotionally constipated child!” 

Sherlock sighed. John reached the insults stage of his anger, which honestly hurts a little every time, though Sherlock is careful not to let it show. Escalating an argument helps nothing. “Just because I prefer not to cloud my judgment with emotion doesn't mean I don't have feelings,” he said.

“Yeah? Well how would you feel if I left? Because I don't see what other option you're giving me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock winced. It always came down to this. John would pack a bag and leave. Go to his sister's, or to Sarah's, once to the pub with Lestrade, who dragged him home drunk at two in the morning. But he always came back, eventually.

Sherlock just has to be patient. 

Even if it feels like his world is caving in.

* * * * * * * * * *

“God, you are so fucking brilliant!” John's mouth hung open the way it always does when Sherlock has floored him with a rapid series of deductions. “The teacup, my god, the bloody teacup,” John put his hands on his knees and bent over for a full body chuckle, “The teacup, Sherlock, the teacup!” he gasped through his laughter, “How the hell did you recognize the teacup? You don't know who the Prime Minister is but you know the china pattern of every queen since Elizabeth the first?”

Sherlock smiled. This particular murder had baffled the police due to a complete lack of motive. It wasn't until he noticed the antique China in the boyfriend's house that Sherlock had cracked the case. The single teacup and saucer was worth over a million pounds, and the victim thought it was just a family heirloom! 

“Come on John,” he said, “let's go home.”

“Yes,” John said, “I'll make tea.” He speared Sherlock with that perfect sunny smile and Sherlock knew he was still riding high on the adrenaline of the chase. Few things made John happier, it seemed.

This wasn't working.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sherlock was careful to provide release valves for John's anger. There was no good reason to put eyeballs in the microwave or limbs in the tub, John's kettle was hardly useful laboratory equipment, and Sherlock had no real interest in the flammability of various jumpers, but they gave John something inconsequential to yell about when Sherlock observed the need. He carefully avoided real arguments with John, since they almost always ended in him leaving the flat.

But of course it would happen like this. Sherlock should have known. One moment John was screaming at him about pigs blood in his shoes, and the next he had Sherlock pinned against a wall, kissing him breathless. One emotional high substituted for another without a moment's hesitation. Sherlock wondered if it made any difference at all to John.

“John,” he said when he managed to break away from the kiss.

“Shut up, you bastard.”

John kissed him again and Sherlock fell apart under John's lips and hands.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sherlock wanted to be happy, and for a while he was. John was magic in bed, and though Sherlock tried desperately to hold on to his objectivity, John wrapped his gorgeous madness around Sherlock's endocrine system and _squeezed_ until Sherlock rode high on hormones for days. He wallowed in the novelty of the experience.

John, on the other hand, needed his extremes. His shattered mind turned to paranoia if things were good for too long. It simply could not believe everything was actually alright. 

He turned to Sherlock a week later, in bed, immediately after wringing Sherlock out with a masterful blowjob. “This is all just an experiment to you, isn't it?”

“What?” said Sherlock, panic creeping in at the edges of his post-coital haze. He struggled to focus. He recognized that tone. John wanted a fight. Needed a fight.

“You're just going to shag me until you get bored, then you'll throw me out with the rubbish,” John leaned against the headboard and crossed his arms. “I know you, Sherlock.”

“John, I promise you, I will never grow bored of you.”

John sighs. “You will. You always do.”

“No, John!”

“Save it, Sherlock,” John said climbing out of bed and fumbling for his trousers, “I'm going to the pub.”

John left, and Sherlock tried to remind himself that this was John's way, that it didn't mean anything, that John would come back, that John would kiss him again tomorrow and everything would be okay. 

But he cried into the soiled sheets anyway.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sherlock was waiting for John in the sitting room when he got back from his sister's.

“We need to talk,” he said.

John dropped his duffel by the door and ran a hand through his hair, utterly calm. “Everything is fine, Sherlock. I just needed to blow off some steam. I'm sorry.” He gave Sherlock a soft smile and walked over to Sherlock's chair. A calloused hand softly caressed Sherlock's cheek and John planted a soft kiss on his lips. 

Sherlock almost broke.

John pulled back and noticed the stricken expression on Sherlock's face. “What's wrong, love?”

Sherlock's thoughts derailed. “Love? You love me?”

“Of course I love you, idiot,” John smiled and kissed him again, harder this time.

Sherlock held on tightly.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sherlock can't play any more. The bow falls to the ground and Sherlock covers his eyes and sobs. John is up in a flash, taking the violin, laying it carefully in it's case, pulling Sherlock into his body and nuzzling the dark curls with his nose.

“What's wrong, love?”

“I can't fix you,” Sherlock chokes out.

“No, no you can't. I'm a disaster,” John agrees.

“I can't fix you, I can only be your fix,” Sherlock says, voice deep and bitter.

John sighs. He tries to turn Sherlock around with a hand on his hip, but Sherlock resists, not wanting to meet his eyes, not wanting to give John a chance to kiss him and drive this conversation out of his mind yet again. 

“Turn around,” John says, “look at me.”

“I can't.”

“Okay,” says John, stroking his back through the dressing gown, “okay. What do you need?”

Sherlock can't even look at his own reflection in the window. “Why can't you just be happy with me?” But Sherlock knows the answer, just like he knows John doesn't. He probably knows more about PTSD than John does, about the paranoia and the emotional extremes. “I can't handle your extremes, John. One moment you love me, the next you're threatening to leave me. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

John pulls back and Sherlock almost crumbles at the sudden lack of warmth behind him. “I didn't know you felt that way. Maybe this isn't going to work. Do you want me to leave?”

Sherlock whirls, finally looking at John with a mad panic in his eyes. “Stop threatening to leave me! Why do you do that constantly?”

John's mouth falls open and he suddenly looks old and haggard. Sherlock closes his eyes. He knows all the answers to his own questions. 

“You will never believe that anyone loves you, because you don't think you deserve it,” Sherlock says.

John's mouth hardens into a line. “Maybe,” he says.

“I love you, John. I love you so much it hurts.”

“I know,” John says, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry, just be happy,” Sherlock pleads.

John sighs again. “I don't know how,” he admits.

“There's a therapy called EMDR, I've been doing some research. . .” 

John's eyes narrow. “Stop trying to fix me, Sherlock. You can't. I'm just a disaster, I'll always be a disaster. Love me as I am or not all. I don't care, but stop trying to fix me!”

“What am I supposed to do, John? Your condition effects this relationship, one might argue it defines it.”

“You're not exactly Mr. Perfect either, Sherlock.”

“You're deflecting. You have PTSD, John, it doesn't magically go away without treatment.”

“Here's the thing, Sherlock, the thing you don't want to admit and therapists don't want to admit: It doesn't just magically go away with treatment either. It can get a little better, maybe, but I will be broken forever. _Forever_ , Sherlock, and if you can't handle that you should tell me now.”

Sherlock trembles and wipes away fresh tears. John has bags under his eyes and a resigned set to his lips and Sherlock realizes he's had this conversation before, probably with his other lovers. For once, Sherlock has no idea what to say, so he just stares at John and hopes for a miracle.

John raises a hand and wipes away a new tear with his thumb. “You are so beautiful,” he says softly, and presses a soft kiss to Sherlock's lips.

“You are self-destructive to a frightening extreme,” Sherlock whispers, still trembling. 

“Yes,” says John, snaking a hand into Sherlock's curls. 

“You cannot just kiss me and make everything better.”

“Can't I, though?” He pushes Sherlock into his chair and straddles him, then uses the hand in his curls to pull Sherlock's head back and force him to meet his eyes. “You're not wrong, Sherlock, but everything you do is insane and dangerous, can't you handle loving me?”

“I'm trying,” Sherlock gasps.

“Keep trying,” John says, and captures Sherlock's lips in a hard, biting, kiss. 

Sherlock doesn't need to be a genius to deduce that this will end in disaster, but he surrenders and kisses John back and delays the inevitable for one more day.


End file.
